POSTED September 10, 2001

What a difference a week makes! One week ago beautiful weather for the entire Labor Day week-end and then this past week-end rain, rain and more rain for both Saturday and Sunday! Then again the Good Lord never promised us sunshine and roses for every day of our lives and you have to play the cards that you are dealt and that we did and very well in my opinion!

Saturday night we had 29 stock cars and 8 karts despite rain all night off and on! 10 TC, 9 SS, 6 MS, 4 MTC. After 11 years of running Mottville I was still totally amazed at the car count considering the weather! I would have been pleased with 20 stock cars and no karts!

The SS had the most trouble with the wet track and thus had the most spin outs! But it was an exciting feature and Matt Elsey won his first feature of the season! Last Monday Matt had had nothing but trouble and I told him better days would come and sure enough they did and fast!

Jason Schaefer won his 5^th MS feature of the season but had his hands full holding off Jamie Kline! She actually led a good deal of the race but spun on the front stretch and came back for 2^nd!  At pay-off Jamie was our happiest driver!

Eric Root is always exciting and Saturday he won his 6^th TC feature of the season! Newcomer Bobby McDonald was 3^rd. Cindy Grinnell, a friend of Fred Collins, raced for the first time ever and had a ball! David Terry purchased the TC 27 from Terry Kline and changed it to #3 and came home 4^th and very happy!

In the MTC Nathan Aumack appeared to have the feature won as the white flag went out but on the last lap he spun in turns 1 and 2 and his brother Mike passed him for his 2^nd feature win of the season!

Once again the karts were outstanding! Greg Brown nipped Justin Stump at the finish line for his 11^th kart feature win of the season and he drove hard on a wet track to really earn it!  Jessica Brown won the dash and Stump the heat so we had 3 different winner in 3 events! I have to really hand it to those karters, the track was wet and it was raining and they drove hard! Way to go!

If Saturday was bad for the weather Sunday was horrible! Rain the entire day and the track never came close to being dry as almost all events were run in the rain! Still we had 6 TC, 6 MS, 5 SS, 1 MTC for 18 stock cars and 5 karts! I guess people are finally figuring out that Mottville will race, rain or no rain!

Once again the karts really put on a show! Ryan and Rick Schnabel really raced hard, through puddles and all and traded the lead back and forth in the heat and feature with Rick taking the heat and Ryan the feature!

MS season points leader Merle Yoder looked great on the wet track and ended a long dry spell by winning his 7^th feature of the season! Jean Behlke, who looked horrible Saturday night on the wet track, found the right combination Sunday and was a strong 2^nd and won the heat!

Wayne Kline showed up in his SS and had trouble in the heat but came home a strong 2^nd in the feature! Morley won his 29^th SS feature of the season but had to work hard for it! Warren Sprague really looked good on the wet track and came home 3^rd in the feature and 2^nd in the heat!

Fred Collins was the class of the TC! He sweep the dash, heat and feature! His 3^rd feature win of the season! Gene Huffman came to Mottville for the first time and had mechanical woes but vowed to return in two weeks!

Overall I was pleased with our car count considering the horrible weather! Now if we can get some decent weather the next two weeks we should really see some big car counts!

Saturday night we paid the SS $100-75-50-40-35-30-25 which is considerably above what we would pay for 9 cars. The Ms got a 7 car pay-off with only 6!

For 2002 we are starting to make plans already (even though we still have 21 dates in 2001!)! Right now I would say we plan on making the SS class our number one class! We will be raisin the pay-off for SS with 7 or more cars at each level and next year it will pay $100-$125-$150 or $200 depending on car count! This is the class that will draw the most people I am really convinced and there are plenty of SS out there! I really think our TC class will continue to grow during the remainder of this season and into 2002! The MTC class apparently needs time to grow but eventually will do so and we need these two “supporting classes” to grow to support the SS class. Our MS class has not had the car count it had in 2000 but hopefully will not decrease any in 2002. The karts have actually been stronger than I expected this season.

For 2002 I do not see any major rules changes as far a building a car for next season! You should certainly be safe in following the 2001 rules for 2002  in that regard and I am getting a lot of questions already about 2002! We will open March 3, 2025 and run Saturdays during March with Sunday as the rain date. Easter Sunday is the last Sunday of March in 2002 so regular Sunday racing will start in April!